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Saturday, April 27, 2013

Father Rutler: Covering Shame with Euphemisms

A weekly column by Father George Rutler.

Liturgical readings in the Easter season often couple the
Book of the Acts of the Apostles with the Book of Revelation. They are
so different that at first you might think it is like putting a history
of Dutch New Amsterdam alongside a science fiction novel. The Acts seem
so human, with charming details, such as the fine needlework done by
Dorcas (Acts 9:36-42). There is none of that in the Revelation of St.
John. But think again: Dorcas the seamstress was raised from the dead.
That is as astonishing as St. John’s descriptions of Heaven, which —
since they are being filtered from eternity into time — seem almost like
hallucinations.

St. John was not given to fantasizing, but he was shown truths to
which the most bizarre fantasies compare only as frail shadows. The very
practical historical details in the Book of Acts are but the other side
of the coin of the great mysteries privileged to St. John. They are
clues to a more solid world than this perishable one, in which mortal
eyes can only see “through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). There
is a biological parallel of this in the way a baby can see only shades
of gray at birth, with between 20/200 and 20/400 vision. After three
months, however, the baby can recognize faces even at a distance and can
tell bright colors. In Heaven there are no pastels, but all is bright,
like the primary colors of a “rainbow shining through an emerald”
(Revelation 4:3). If St. John’s description seems confused, it is
because human words cannot diagram the grammar of Heaven.

Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, described education as
something like bringing eternal wisdom out from latency into articulate
consciousness. A new baby can look very old, and Socrates sensed that
the life of this little one was coaxed from eternity into this mortal
world. The teacher, acting as a midwife (maieutikos) lets hidden knowledge breathe.

Having come down from Heaven, Jesus shot his sharpest language at
those who would harm the littlest children, whose lives are endowed from
Heaven. Even selfish people with a shred of conscience need verbal fig
leaves, euphemisms, to cover their shame when they sanction unholy acts
against life. Sometimes they call babies killed in “partial-birth”
abortions “viable fetuses.” On April 18, The New York Times
referred to newborn babies murdered by an abortionist as “neonates.” You
might then call Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents, the Termination of
the Neonates. But the same issue of that newspaper, in an article on
page 24 about diaper training, spoke of “babies” as did an Op-Ed essay
on gun control.

Our Lord knows more about it than we do, and that is why he said:
“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you
that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in
heaven” (Matthew 18:10).

This website is dedicated to a renewal of Christian culture. It is inspired by Sir Winston Churchill, a valiant defender of Christian civilization, who believed "we have a great treasure to guard; that the inheritance in our possession represents the prolonged achievement of the centuries." With Churchill, we believe that a "fraternal association" of the English-speaking peoples must "for their own safety and for the good of all walk together in majesty, in justice and in peace.”